So you think times are tough now?

By PAUL GRONDAHL, Staff writer

First published: Sunday, April 26, 2009

Does the thought of spooning into a steaming plate of woodchuck, muskrat, raccoon or squirrel leave you squeamish?

Then you didn't live through the Great Depression the way 91-year-old Russell Gordon did.

If this brutal economy grows even meaner and nastier than it already is, you might need to rethink the notion of recession roadkill, Gordon reckons.

In 1931, Gordon's dad was laid off from the textile mill near their home in Whitehall, Washington County, and struggled to feed his wife and 10 children.

The family's very survival came down to a large ceramic bowl set on the kitchen table each evening. His mom would point to it and say, "If you don't eat that, you don't eat." The kids knew better than to complain. And they always cleaned their plates of the rough-hewn casserole of parsnips, potatoes, onions and tomatoes from a backyard garden and rodents killed that day for meat and pelts that would fetch a buck.

"We did what we had to do to survive," recalled Gordon, who was hired in 1935 at 17 by the Civilian Conservation Corps and labored four years building state campgrounds in the Adirondacks. A monthly $25 government check sent home to his widowed father kept the large brood afloat.

In today's grim economic landscape, we could learn a thing or two by studying the survival skills of the "greatest generation." Their experience of gutting it out in tough times, a deep streak of self-reliance and abiding commitment to frugality — turning off lights in unused rooms, darning holes in socks instead of throwing them out, recycling aluminum foil from food packaging — resonates anew in 2009.

"Everyone in those days was self-sufficient. We could put a stick in the ground and get a potato. I worry that young people today aren't prepared to take care of themselves if things get really bad again," said Ruth Hand, 88, of Clifton Park, who grew up on Old Post Road in Rotterdam. She recalled a Depression-era childhood spent tending chickens, growing vegetables and cleaning rooms in the tourist home her family ran to supplement her dad's income from a foundry job.

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"We've only been in this recession for 18 months and nobody knows what it will look like in two years," said Hochfelder. But federally insured bank deposits, unemployment insurance, welfare programs and a social safety net that wasn't in place during the Great Depression will lessen the impact of a prolonged recession this time.
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